In days past, the door-to-door salesman was the ultimate seller. Armed with product samples and a pitch crafted back at headquarters, they'd march from town to town, tracking down leads and converting them into customers. Except for only a few businesses, that model has disappeared from the sales and marketing landscape. Or has it?
As the speed of online retail grows ever faster—there's roughly $470 million in online sales per hour—businesses need an at-the-ready salesperson. Unfortunately, sending a sales rep digitally knocking on the doors of over five billion internet users is neither feasible nor practical.
While the hustle of the door-to-door sales rep may seem a distant memory, their spirit lives on in well-designed landing pages. With a headline that hooks better than a friendly smile and an undeniable offer, your business can take advantage of a 24/7 sales rep fit for the next generation of e-commerce. Ready to learn how?
What Are Landing Pages?
Landing pages, like any sales rep, are there to convert. Whether that's converting a site visitor into a lead or a lead into a sale, landing pages exist to convert. They are a specific web page that offers a solution in exchange for information.
A basic landing page should include numerous key elements. These include a headline, an offer, a call-to-action, an image, and a fillable form. Together they form the basis for a simple but effective tool in your conversion arsenal.
When it comes to landing pages, less is more. You want the user to take a specific action after visiting the page and anything that doesn't lead to that outcome is excessive. That means every word, every color, and every image on the page must drive the user to fill out the form.
Paring down a page to just those essentials is no easy feat. To make things a little easier, we're willing to share some of our 'secret sauce' best practices for landing page optimization.
Landing Page Best Practices
Creating your best sales rep from scratch seems like a tall task if you try to take it all on at once. Instead, think of the page in two parts: the written components (copy) and everything else (design). These are broad categories that can often interlap, like images, but serve distinct purposes.
The copy should persuade and the design should facilitate. That means every word on the page should drive the viewer to take the suggested action. Meanwhile, all the design elements should make it easy for the user to see, recognize, and select the proposed action. We'll explore these two concepts in depth below.
But first, consider the offer. Is something your business, and only your business can offer? Does it solve a specific issue your intended audience faces? And does it stack up to what your competitors offer? Answering these questions will help you create an offer that is too good to refuse, the most vital ingredient of a landing page. That might be a webinar, demo, or ebook for B2B sales, while B2C e-commerce might offer a free trial or exclusive discount.
Optimized Landing Page Copy
With so few words available, each one matters more. Thankfully, optimizing your landing page doesn't, and shouldn't, need to be built on guesswork. Start by getting an understanding of your audience and the action you want them to take.
If there are multiple audiences with different demographics or firmographics, consider a landing page for each one. Because each word needs to resonate with your intended audience, it has to be in the language that the audience uses, there's no space for the generic. It should also match the language they're likely to use when searching. Include relevant keywords and terms throughout the page to ensure users can organically land there.
Motivate With Headlines
Once you have a specific, targeted audience in mind, you can begin to create copy that ignites your visitors' desire for your solution. It all starts with what's likely to be the first thing they see on the page: the headline.
With five words you need to hook the reader with all the information they'll need to stay longer. While five words isn't a hard and fast rule, it matches the 0.05 seconds users spend on a page before forming an opinion.
To ensure that the opinion they form is that the page is worth their time, create headlines that focus exclusively on the benefit of the offer. "Learn the Secret to Soaring Sales" or "Feel Your Best Every Day" are some examples that pique interest and keep visitors on the landing page.
Focus on Personalized Problems, Solutions, Features, and Benefits
Keeping that benefit focus throughout your copy will help ensure more visitors fill out the form. But there's other relevant information to include on the landing page. You should also acknowledge the problem that brought them here in the first place, your solution, and its unique features and benefits.
Personalized Problems
As far as problems go, speaking your audience's language is about more than word choice. Show off how well you understand them by creating a landing page that addresses their problem. The underlying issue may be the same for multiple demographics, but speaking to why a particular group experiences that problem shows you understand their needs at a granular level.
Solutions that Spark Interest
Once you've identified their specific problem, sketch out your solution. In the case of a landing page, this should relate to the offer. That offer won't necessarily be your business's exact product or service, but the solution should be. Take a line or two explaining how your offer brings them closer to your fix for their problem.
Features and Benefits that Enhance the Offer
Explaining your solution isn't enough, though. What makes your solution different, ideally better, than your competitors? Why is it worth following through with your offer right now? Answering these questions will get you thinking and writing about your solution's unique features and benefits.
Craft Clever Calls To Action
As for calls to action, these should flow naturally from the offer. 'Click here' and 'fill here' won't cut it. Give people a specific action that they'll be taking. Action verbs like download, subscribe, and register all up the ante.
CMG Experts Say: To really take your action up a notch, get creative with the phrasing and tailor it to the solution you're offering.
Landing Page Design Best Practices
Whether you're looking at B2B landing page best practices or e-commerce landing page best practices, the same design principles apply. With landing pages, perhaps more than any other web page your business operates, simplicity shines. The page must load within 2 seconds, or you lose 47% of visitors. So, a simple design with minimal bells and whistles is to your advantage.
Keep Everything 'Above the Fold'
Start with the overall layout of the page. If any key information—like the call to action button— is only seen by scrolling, you risk visitors never seeing it. A decreasing, but still a majority of site visitors, keep their attention 'above the fold' meaning they don't scroll down a page. Ensure users get all the relevant information at a glance, keeping everything important towards the top of the page.
Optimize for Mobile
If you grew up or lived in a house with a "computer room" I've got news for you. Research shows 32% of all web traffic comes from mobile. That's another reason why you want to keep your landing page simple. High-quality graphics and videos are great, but on a web page, efficiency is everything. The page should load smoothly and quickly on mobile to position the page for success.
Forms that Fit Your Needs
When it comes to capturing visitor information, only collect the information you need. Using generic forms that auto-populate questions might save you time, but it will create problems for visitors looking to get your offer with minimal effort. Name and email are usually sufficient unless you need additional demographic or firmographic information.
CMG Experts Say: If you do need additional information, prepare for people to balk at your request. In that case, offer an email capture box for a different offer. This way, they consider the visit a success, and you will still walk away with a lead.
Experiment With Buttons and Colors
Remember that the design of your landing page should make it clear where visitors need to read and click to get your offer. The only thing worse than not having a clear call-to-action button, is having one that's indistinguishable from the rest of the page. Using colors that clearly pop off the page doesn't mean you need to use neon, just something that's visibly different from the other colors already present.
If you're not sure whether you've nailed the color combinations out of the gate, don't worry. There's always room for monitoring, analysis, and experimentation with landing pages. If a design isn't performing as you hoped, don't be afraid to switch things up.
Land Leads With CMG Local Solutions
Using 5000 words is easier than using five to make the same point. Making a barebones page feel full can be just as daunting. If you're struggling to create a landing page that ignites passion for your offering, we can help.
We get it. Sometimes even your best sales rep needs a little pep talk. We promise we won't go "Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross," but we will help your business convert visitors into leads with landing pages that hook even the most hesitant visitors.
Contact us today to get started.
